'Then all I see is the barrel of a gun coming out of the dark': A captain's harrowing call

Capt. Brent Colbert walked into a Lincoln trailer home. He knew the couple who lived there didn't have kids so was suspicious when dispatch got a call from the woman saying she had a gun to a child's head.

The man, sitting in a recliner in the front room, had no idea his significant other was armed. He told Colbert and his partner, Jason Crum, that it might have been a prank call. She didn't have a gun, he thought.

"Then all I see is the barrel of a gun coming out of the dark," Colbert recalled.

There was a rifle. There wasn't a kid.

The woman emerged from a backroom.

"She said, 'Yes, I do,'" Colbert continued. The hunting rifle was nearly close enough to grab.

"She's saying, 'Shoot me, shoot me.'"

Colbert and Crum took cover. Duty pistols aimed in her direction, they began trying to talk the woman down. The sheriff's deputies attempted to get her to put down the weapon. Colbert thinks he must have pleaded with her at least 100 times to drop the gun.

Six minutes later, she did. Momentarily, the rifle rested on the ground. The two relieved officers went to move in and apprehend the 48-year-old woman.

She stood roughly 20 feet away.

Suddenly the woman grabbed the gun and pointed it right at Colbert.

"My finger was on the trigger," he said.

Then Crum yelled, "Hey," to get the woman's attention. It worked. She turned toward him.

Colbert eased his finger off the trigger of his gun.

He holstered his duty weapon and grabbed his Taser in what felt like one swift movement.

"It was just that split second," he said. "I don't even know. I thought, 'I can do this.'"

He did.

Colbert used the stun gun on the woman.

"You were supposed to kill me," she told them.

She was taken to the hospital for treatment for mental health issues.

This call happened in May 2014.

Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton retold the story recently during an award ceremony in honor of Colbert, who was named the 2017 officer of the year by the local American Legion.

"It was a classic suicide by cop," Dutton told those gathered at the event. "She gave every reason to have a justified shooting."

"She was going to kill him, or he would have to shoot to stop her."

Dutton also referenced the call in his four-page nomination letter for Colbert to receive the award.

"Anyone who knows about muscle memory knows it is practically impossible to stop an action that the brain has perceived as a threat. In Brent's case, he still had control of himself to recognize in a fraction of a second that he had another option," Dutton wrote in the letter.

The sheriff said he also gleaned information from a pile of commendations for Colbert he's received over the years. Colbert has been a full-time deputy since 2003.

"It's well deserved. We've got the documentation here to show it," Dutton told Colbert. 'We nominated you. They picked you."